Tegra K1 benchmarks emerge

Nvidia didn’t have much luck with the Tegra 4, as the chip was a bit late and did not get many high-volume design wins. However, the Tegra 4 did bring a massive improvement in GPU performance, as Nvidia moved from 12 ULP cores on the Tegra 3 to 72 on the Tegra 4.

The Tegra K1 features a 192-core Kepler GPU and Nvidia insists it can deliver console grade performance on mobiles. According to Tom’s Hardware, the new SoC really does live up to Nvidia’s promise, as it outperforms every single SoC on the market in almost every benchmark, with graphics leading the way.

In 3DMark it scores 22285 in Ice Storm Unlimited, 24927 in Graphics and 16299 in Physics test and it ends up 25 to 35 percent faster than the Tegra 4 and Snapdragon 800. It also outpaces the Apple A7 with an even higher margin. It outpaces the competition in GFXBench, too.

There are a couple of caveats though. Tom’s tested the Tegra K1 on a Lenovo 4K monitor, so on-screen scores were lower than the rest of the field, but in every off-screen test it wiped the floor with the competition with relative ease.However, the K1 will not be competing against the Snapdragon 800 – in a couple of months it will have to take on the Snapdragon 805, with vastly improved Adreno 420 graphics.

All in all, Nvidia appears to have a good product, but the big question is whether it will be able to find enough takers to make a difference.